Revisiting the first BACK TO THE FUTURE
picture is, ironically enough, like traveling in a time machine and looking back
fondly at a unique period in our pop culture.

The film originally played,
more or less, like a loving time capsule of a kinder and more congenial
period in American history (in its case, the 1950’s). Now, it sort of
plays on many more distinct levels. BACK TO THE FUTURE is one of those
wonderful films in a genre I like to call hybrid cinema. It’s part
escapist special effects picture, part family comedy, part high school teen
comedy, part mad (well, not quite so mad) scientist film, part social
satire and commentary, part Frank Capra-esque small-town parable, and
finally part science fiction film. That it amalgamates all of these facets
so well is a testament to this film’s longevity and popularity over the
years. BACK TO THE FUTURE remains one of the more endearing and
entertaining films of the 80’s and, not only that, but it established itself
as one of the best time travel films ever concocted, at least in Carl
Sagan's eyes.

Time travel is nothing new to popular
fiction. H.G. Wells was writing about it in THE TIME MACHINE nearly a
century before the film came out. Also, earlier films before BACK TO THE
FUTURE that were popular with the film-going public also intrigued interest
in time travel, like James Cameron’s THE TERMINATOR from 1984. That
movie chronicled a killing cyborg that was sent from the future and to the
past in order to kill a woman that would eventually give birth to a future
leader that would destroy the machines.

Although that science fiction film was more
of a visceral action-adventure picture, it still posed a lot of problematic
and metaphysical questions about the very nature of time travel. I guess I
say problematic in the sense of referring to the bane of existence of
all time travel pictures – paradox. For example, if you sent a robot
from the future and into the past and he did, in fact, kill the woman, why
would any intelligence in the future need to decide to send the robot back
to kill her when she already died? Also, what if you were a soldier and
were sent into the past from the future by a man that turns out to be your
own son that you conceived with the woman in the past. If the man did not
send you back to the past you would not have met the woman, not have
conceived the child, who would then not have lived on into the future to
send you into the past in the first place. I have just gone crossed-eyed.

Okay, there is an acceptable level of
disbelief when it comes to the issue of time travel and paradox in
films. I think if you constantly become a needless a pragmatist over these
issues then it can seriously impede your enjoyment of an otherwise good
film. Most films that have dealt with time travel have wisely avoided the
issue of paradox altogether, but the most fascinating and refreshing aspect
of BACK TO THE FUTURE is in the way it embraces the nature of Chaos Theory
and paradox and let’s them provide for an overall story arc for the film.

The film is overwhelmingly a light comedy, but
underneath it all it poses some truly enthralling questions. For starters,
what if you time traveled back to the past, met both of your parents before
they hooked up, and then you accidentally did something that impaired their
ability to get together, get married, and have kids. Obviously, if they
never married then they would have never conceived you…the consequences
would obviously be disastrous.You would cease to exist. It’s
an incredibly creepy notion, and it's sort of indicative of how BACK TO THE
FUTURE, outside of its comic high jinks, actually is a sort of sinister in
its tone. The film also proposes something even more lurid – what if you
made your own mother, in the past, fall in love with you instead of
your future father? Oh my…paging Dr. Freud.

I think that’s the key to the overall success
of the film. It's funny in all of the right places, has the right
effective balance between light comedy and almost farcical pratfalls and
physical gags, has a keen eye for social commentary, and it finally tells a
science fiction tale of time travel that does not ignore the issue of
paradox, but rather embraces it. It's not so much that the film’s
young teenage time traveler, Marty McFly, has to get back to the future with
his time traveling machine, but he actually has to fix the mistakes he has
made in the past in order to ensure his basic survival in the present. Not
only that, but the film also tantalizes its viewers with something even more
appealing – if you could help your parents out in the past so that
they are not complete social misfits and awkward parents in the present,
then wouldn't you? If your father was a hopelessly apathetic and
tireless dweeb, would you not want to, if you had the power, help him in the
past in order to make him more empowered in the present? Sign me up!

Despite the film’s enormous success at the
box office in 1985, it did not have an easy path to the big screen. The
film was co-written by future Oscar winning director Robert Zemeckis and Bob
Gale, whose previous screenwriting credits were somewhat dubious, to say the
least (they wrote Steven Spielberg’s 1979 bomb 1941). Bob Gale had the
inspiration for the basic premise of the film while looking at an old high
school yearbook of his father’s and wondering if he would have been a friend
with him as a teenager. This created a springboard for the film’s concept
of a teen that is accidentally time traveled back to the past and
subsequently meets his parents as teens. After the script was completed, Zemeckis
tried to sell the idea to Disney, but they felt that the idea of a teen time
traveling back to meet his parents in the past with his mom accidentally
falling in love with him was too risqué. Although there is no denying the
obvious incestual overtones of the film, Disney’s concerns seemed
overzealous in hindsight. In fact, while trying to sell the concept of the
film many studios found it lacking in risqué content. In an age when
more adult-oriented teen comedies like FAST TIME AT RIDGEMONT HIGH and
REVENGE OF THE NERDS were popular, BACK TO THE FUTURE seemed too wholesome
in comparison.

The film eventually found a home at Universal
Pictures and with Zemeckis’ buddy in Mr. Spielberg. As a result, the
film got a confident green light. Although it may seem impossible to
envision the time machine to be anything but the DeLorean that was in the
final cut (a 1981 DMC-12 model, with a 6-cylinder PRV Peugeot engine, to be
more specific), Zemeckis and Gale postulated other concepts before they
arrived at the now famous car. Early concepts in first drafts included
everything from a laser to a fridge that was attached to an atomic bomb (now
that would have made for an interesting time machine). Fearing that they
did not want children to climb into refrigerators, Zemeckis and Spielberg
eventually opted for the DeLorean…wise choice, indeed.

With the script ready, pre-production
complete, and a nifty and unique time traveling device settled on, the
filmmakers then set their sights on a star to headline the film. Eric Stolz
was originally cast as Marty McFly and Zemeckis actually filmed a large
amount of footage with the then young star. However, as he revealed in the
supplemental features on the recently released DVD set of the film, Zemeckis
made one of his “hardest” decisions in firing Stoltz, who he then thought
was not right for the role after the numerous weeks of filming. His
replacement was Michael J. Fox, who was then garnering great critical and
audience accolades for his role as Alex P. Keaton on the hit show FAMILY
TIES. The role of Marty McFly proved to be one of the most influential to
the unfolding of Fox’s star power, but it would also prove to be physically
and emotionally taxing on him. He would film FAMILY TIES all day and into
the afternoon and then rush straight from that show’s set to the BACK TO THE
FUTURE shoot and work until 6 am in the morning. In a recent interview Fox
claimed to have only slept two hours a night for nearly two months while
filming FAMILY TIES and the film concurrently.

To act as a foil to the hot-headed
impulsiveness of Fox's teen character, the filmmakers made an inspired
casting decision by getting Christopher Lloyd to play Emmett “Doc” Brown,
the inventor of the famous DeLorean time machine that ran on plutonium
through its "flux capacitor". John Lithgow original was considered for the
role, but Lloyd, as with Fox, was a gifted TV actor who managed to inspire
great laughter with his comic performance, in this case on TAXI. Basing his
manic and intensely zany performance on, to his own admission, Albert
Einstein and conductor Leopold Stokowski, Lloyd managed to create one of the
more endearing and silly performances to grace the silver screen of the
mid-80’s. Along with his agitated and near possessed scientific zeal, Brown
and McFly emerged as a sort of offbeat comic duo with a lot of chemistry,
with Fox playing the relative straight man to Lloyd’s outrageous and
hyperactive grandstanding. Watching Lloyd you really do believe that a guy
as kooky as him invented a time machine.

As for the film’s basic plot, it is set up
simply and expeditiously. It begins in the present (in this case, 1985)
with a skateboarding and guitar playing McFly who manages to live out a
typical teenage life in small town middle-America. He's sort of a
recluse, chastised equally by both his mother and his teachers. His parents
are an eclectic bunch, to say the least. His mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson)
is kind of an alcoholic white trash figure whereas his father George (the
very funny and memorable Crispin Glover) is a middle age man so preoccupied
with overt dweebiness that he makes Napoleon Dynamite seem suave and
sophisticated. Well, poppa McFly seems content with watching reruns of The
Honeymooners and letting his boss Biff (the wonderfully contemptible and
crude Thomas F. Wilson) walk all over him. Mama McFly guzzles Vodka with
every evening meal. Gosh, if only Marty could fix his parents in some
way.

Well, the only stability that young Marty has
is in his friendship with the local mad scientist Dr. Brown, who just may be
the nuttiest inventor in recent screen memory. It seems that Doc has
discovered the secret of time travel (in this case, take a cool looking car,
put some sophisticated gadgets on it, fuel it with a dangerous power source,
and voila – instant time machine). One night at a local deserted
shopping mall, Marty and Doc successfully test his time machine. Well, through a series of surprises, Marty
eventually ends up in the time machine and winds up going back exactly 30
years into the past and visits his hometown in 1955. Obviously, having a
pimped-up DeLorean show up in 1955 would make some heads turn (there is a
very funny sight gag where a farmer mistakes the car and Marty in his
radiation suit to be an spaceship and alien respectively). When Marty makes
it into town, more time travel culture shock strikes the young man, who
obviously does not quite fit into the ultra-conservative socio-cultural
norms of the 50’s. Even as he walks through the town in his goose down
vest, many people look at him incredulously and ask him why he’s wearing a
life preserver.

Marty makes a few mistakes early on. There
is a funny play on words when he orders a “Pepsi Free” (now renamed Diet
Pepsi) and the café owner barks back, “If ya wanna drink pal, you gotta pay
for it.” He also makes a key error in judgment when he bumps into his
teenage father at the same café. He was…or is…the same hopeless nerd he
will become in the future, who is picked on by his future boss, who is in
1955 a bitter and mean school bully. Marty makes one catastrophic mistake
when he follows George around and accidentally stops a key event from
happening – in this case, his father meeting his mother. As a result
of this (and unfortunately for Marty), his future mom develops a gigantic
crush on him instead. Yikes!

Realizing the severity of his situation,
Marty seeks out the only man who can help him, the young 1955 Doc Brown.
Needless to say, Marty has a very tricky time trying to convince Doc who he
is and how he got to 1955. When he tries to tell Doc that Ronald Regan will
become the US President in the future, Doc responds completely stupefied and
screams out, “The actor? Who is vice-president…Jerry Lewis??!!”
Eventually, Marty is able to provide proof of the existence of the time
machine to Doc and he concocts an amazingly elaborate scheme to get Marty
back to the future. There is only one BIG problem – since Marty stopped
his parents from getting together, this could mean that they will not get
married and not have kids, thus creating a paradox which could make Marty
become “erased from existence.” Not only has Marty got to get back to his
time, but he also must now get his dorky dad to ask out his popular mom so
they can…well…you know.

20 years after its release, the one aspect
that still holds up terrifically in this film is how much fun it has with
the underlying material. I appreciate how this film basically forgets any
pretence of scientific plausibility (the time traveling car concept is,
let’s face it, ludicrous) and instead invests in its basic story and allows
the performances to bring out the natural comedy and satire. BACK TO THE
FUTURE has been unfortunately labeled a science fiction film. Yes, it has
concepts grounded in the genre, but it’s nowhere near the level of other
escapist entertainments (the film is not interested in showing us bold
visual sights and images – it only has 32 special effects shots in total).
Rather, the film works as a very funny and undemanding family comedy and
tries to explore issues of time travel paradox as they would, more or less,
occur.

One of the great pleasures in the film is to
see the comedy shine through even in the direst circumstances. When faced
with the possibility of his life being erased due to paradox, Marty responds
with a 1980’s vernacular that his situation is “heavy,” to which Doc asks,
“Why do you always say that? Is there something wrong with the Earth’s
gravitational pull in the future?” Another funny scene occurs where Marty
unveils to Doc a futuristic camcorder from 1985 and shows him a video of him
in a radiation suit testing the DeLorean in the future. After seeing
the footage Doc then surmises, “That suit…of course…I must need it to
protect myself from all of the fallout from your future’s atomic wars!”
BACK TO THE FUTURE is filled with witty, satiric running gags like these all
through it its two hours. Even more funny is a wild and wacky moment
where Marty, who ends up a a local high school dance and plays with the prom
band, engages in a wild electric guitar solo and, as a result, inadvertently
and single-handedly invents rock 'n roll. While Marty plays wildly,
the other band member, Marvin Berry, calls up his cousin Chuck and
tells him "I've found that new sound you're looking for!"

The film became one of the biggest hits of
the 1980’s, and it not only launched the film career of Michael J. Fox, but
it also marked the launching of a series of even greater films by
director Zemeckis. His future films, like WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?, FORREST GUMP, and most recently the
exceptional POLAR EXPRESS
have revealed him
to be one of the eminent film pioneers and voices of his generation. BACK
TO THE FUTURE may appear, at face value, to be an affable and pleasant
comedy, but it also acted as a catalytic spark that launched the creation of
many more important films to come.

BACK TO THE FUTURE is a film that has aged,
but it still nevertheless maintains a reputation for being one of the more
unique and offbeat time travel pictures. Yet, it should not really be
remembered as a sci-fi comedy as it mostly tries to forget about
science and go straight for the comedy instead. The film
playfully swims through the inventiveness of its smart and crafty screenplay
and is able to get genuine laughs out of its material while not ignoring the
issues of paradox and Chaos Theory in time travel. For what it’s worth, I
look at the film as sort of a nice combination of the bold ideas of Wells
mixed with some Capra-esque charm, warmth, and humor that comes naturally
out of human relationships. The film emerges now to be a wonderful piece of
1980’s escapist nostalgia and poses a very serious object lesson to all
prospective time travelers out there:

If you’re going to time travel
into the past, make damn sure that you don’t accidentally bump into your mom
and let her “get the hots” for you.